DU was bad enough, but reports filtering out of Baghdad suggest US forces used a new type of weapon to capture the city. This is the real story behind the fall of Baghdad and it truly is the stuff of nightmares

Visible Origami — August 26, 2015

Dog Poet Transmitting…….

There are so many mysteries in life and it seems to me that the most impressive mysteries are the one’s right in front of our face that we bypass every day because we think we get it but we don’t get it because if we got it… what we learned would be in operation all of the time, simply because of the inescapable truth contained in the understanding of it. For instance, one of the mysteries is that of the existence of an all powerful divine presence that not only permeates all of existence but which composes it out of the substance of its own being and is at the same time every living thing in some fashion or another because all life is an expression of the divine life force.

99% of the time when false-self important intellectuals attack or denigrate the existence of a divine being, it is about religion, as if this sort of apples and oranges argument were scientifically valid, which it is not …but those who argue about most anything because their objective is argument to begin with, could care less about false premises even as they argue about how sound their principles are. The truth is that they can imagine nothing more important or worthy than themselves and the idea of any force greater than themselves is anathema to them. It always amuses me to see those with the dimmest understanding of the totality of it all, holding in contempt the mind of the grand architect who formed everything including them.

It is not with these scoffers and self felating egotists that I am concerned. They will discover the truth at some point, across the massive reach of life and lifetimes at that time and place where illumination finally descends on them. My concern is with those of us who KNOW there is a God and yet who do not spend every waking moment in search of communion with it. My concern is with those who know there is a god but who prefer to argue with those of other faiths about the composition of the almighty and what the almighty wants and prefers as if they were privy to these informations which, of course, they are not. These things should not be my concerns because my capacity to do anything is completely in the hands of the one who decides whether anything is successful or not. If the almighty forbids something, it doesn’t happen. If the almighty permits something it does happen, for the purpose of demonstration. Are there myriad and uncountable exceptions and contradictions to all of this? Yes. Does any one of us know more than a fragment about any of it? No.

Another mystery is that though we see men and women dying all around us, for some reason we do not think that we shall die. I think a stork told one of the Pandavas this but I am not absolutely sure. The stork, if memory serves, was an expression of Dharma.

All through our lives we war against ourselves. We remember selectively. We err and regret and then we go forth and err again. There is something in us that tells us we will get it right the next time as we go about it in the same fashion and we do not get it right and we regret and then set out to repeat the action yet again. I have spent my life reflecting on these things and on the meaning of life and I have come to one inescapable conclusion; one cannot know. It is impossible to know and one only understands when one has effectively managed to surrender to the higher self within and ceases forever to contend with it again. Here is what Lao Tzu had to say on the matter.

You will note what has been highlighted in bold text. If you want more of Lao Tzu, all that we have of what he said is to be found here.

Another mystery is how we can fear the unknown, while possessing a certitude of the existence of a profound awareness that interpenetrates all life and without which there would be no life and which is fundamentally aware of even the slightest alteration in our state and is aware of us beyond any capacity we possess ourselves and yet… we doubt and we fear. I suspect it is because we measure the benevolence and mercy of the almighty against our own. We attribute to the almighty a facsimile of our own nature and expect the almighty to behave as we do. This is not how it works. What is it in us that causes us to reason and project in this manner?

“Be utterly humble
And you shall hold to the foundation of peace.
Be at one with all these living things which, having arisen and flourished,
Return to the quiet whence they came,
Like a healthy growth of vegetation
Falling back upon the root.Acceptance of this return to the root has been called ‘quietism,’ Acceptance of quietism has been condemned as ‘fatalism.’ But fatalism is acceptance of destiny And to accept destiny is to face life with open eyes, Whereas not to accept destiny is to face death blindfold.
He who is open-eyed is open-minded-
He who is open-minded is open-hearted,
He who is open-hearted is kingly,
He who is kingly is godly,
He who is godly is useful,
He who is useful is infinite,
He who is infinite is immune,
He who is immune is immortal.”

One of the cardinal objectives of self inquiry is to find the enemy within and to recognize it. Far more important is to find the master of all things, for this force will instantaneously deal with the enemy within. However, finding the master within is consistently hindered by the enemy within and that is why recognition is so very important. There is an old phrase that I am very fond of; “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” It ties in with this concept- we become like that which we emulate. We cannot know the ineffable and there are sound metaphysical reasons for this. That which we aspire after should forever be beyond our reach in its entirety so that we are always approaching and never arriving. Like they say, ‘it’s the journey that counts’. We do encounter stages of completeness and that which we pursue leaves a trail and we acquire particles as if we were being pulled along in the tail of a comet. Eventually we become fully magnetized to the comet or the star we rotate around. Some seek total immersion in the ineffable and a complete loss of personal identity and some seek to be filled with the presence of the ineffable but to allow the light of it to flow unhindered through the stained glass windows of the personality. I am of the second order and I believe there is a choice involved here and we have our reasons for making that choice and we are made a certain way that inclines us toward that choice; by what?

Perhaps one final mystery will serve for the conclusion of this entry. How is it that a seeker after a particular path can find illumination and a seeker after a very different path can find illumination and their approach, their tactics and their scripture be significantly different from the other? The truth is that they are both right and that is why the wise do not argue. There is one mountain and many paths. It is, faith, certitude and determination that lead us up the path. The paths each have a particular degree of difficulty. One might say that the path is ourselves and we are the path the ineffable walks in a course that resolves in mutual recognition, although we were known and recognized long before. Once this recognition takes place, all arguments and inconsistencies of spiritual variables as expressed in different faiths, dissolve into a primary understanding. There is no longer a ‘this’ and a ‘that’. It is what it is.

We have one responsibility and that is to maintain our commitment to the one we aspire to emulate and.. as our intensity grows and our sincerity is deepened and refined we are given more of the qualities of the ineffable to express. It troubles some that I say that it doesn’t matter what we go through if we arrive at the intended objective. It troubles some when I talk about utter surrender to the inner light and a complete submission to the inner voice but that is what I have discovered as the result of all of my efforts and errors. I know that I do not know, as I know that I can be given what I need to know when I need to know it. I am not reliant on my own devices. I have repeatedly failed at this. Perhaps others have been and will be more successful. I can only speak for myself and so this is the path that I follow and this is the message that I preach.